The USTA to Pause 2013 Schedule Changes

The junior competition committee of the USTA has spent the last couple of years working on a plan for growth that focuses on noble causes such as trying to lower costs for competitors, lowering school absences and adhering to Wayne Bryan’s “Don’t get on a plane to play a tournament until you can win the tournaments you can drive to and don’t get in a car until you can win the tournaments you can pedal to.”

After hearing the tennis industry’s reaction to the changes, the USTA agreed to have a series of meetings with a group of tennis industry insiders to discuss the situation. READ MORE

ARE YOU SITTING DOWN??? The results are in concerning the mtg with USTA execs in Chicago yesterday...It's a good news/we'll see situation! READ THIS & BE SURE TO EXPRESS YOURSELF BY ADDING TO THE COMMENTS AT THE END. I will notify you immediately when I learn when/where the "Town Hall Listening Meetings" will be.

Looks like these guys are all millionaires. Let the talent talk, not money.

To be fair, I've only read the Hannity manifestos and it's a lot more hot air than substance in my opinion. I'm glad that we're trying to get on the same page and I think there are ways to improve the 2014 system. But I'm just not super thrilled that the 'Tennis Parent' representatives are mostly millionaires. And I've not been impressed with Hannity's bluster. (I'll grant him a few obvious points, but after that it was all about puffing out the chest...and Russell took the bait too.)

Looks like these guys are all millionaires. Let the talent talk, not money.

To be fair, I've only read the Hannity manifestos and it's a lot more hot air than substance in my opinion. I'm glad that we're trying to get on the same page and I think there are ways to improve the 2014 system. But I'm just not super thrilled that the 'Tennis Parent' representatives are mostly millionaires. And I've not been impressed with Hannity's bluster. (I'll grant him a few obvious points, but after that it was all about puffing out the chest...and Russell took the bait too.)

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Birdie.....It took time, money and (possibly) a private jet to go to those meetings.

I'm thankful for all the effort the group and the USTA put in.

Now it depends on you, me and everybody else to go to the TOWNHALL MEETINGS and let our voices heard.

I like the decsion to cancel the changes for 2013 and hold a series of meetings. We, the parents and coaches, should insist that the panel be changed. The current one makes no sense. On one side should be the 3 responsible for HP- Higueras, PMac, and Berger plus whoever else needed from USTA. Other side should NOT be represented by TV stars and owners of big companies. I want proven coaches there: WBryan, Saviano, Bill Clark,
and some guys/gals I don't know their names.

In the meantime, hope the various contending factions can reach acceptable understandings on:

1. Family trip opportunities to national tournaments
2. Adequate variety of opponents
3. Convenient opportunities for coaches to recruit

The complaints about the proposed changes seem to fall into one or another of these three categories

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4. Dump the contrived Regions that don't reduce the participants travel (& travel expenses). Just because they say it does doesn't mean it does. Let the participants decide which L2s, L3s & L4s are the best travel options for them.

5. The usta talks about kids not missing school......& then yanks the WinterNat & the Easter Bowl off the schedule. Keep those events on the schedule since all kids are off during WinterNat & some kids are off during Easter Bowl.

6. Don't have the ONLY two L1s 3 weeks from each other (in mid Summer) & then no other L1s for the other 11 mos. of the year. Not only is it dumb, It's a huge advantage for the Sept. birthdate kid & a huge disadvantage for the June kid. (The outlier theory on steroids). As mentioned in number 5 above....keep the Easter Bowl (or something like it) in Spring & keep the WinterNat (for lots of reasons) the week after Christmas.

7. Not one kid or one parent wants the draws cut further. Keep them where they are.....& for the L2s, bump them up to 64 (or forty eight) for the 14 y/o, 16 y/o & 18 y/o divisions. (A 48 draw gives the 16 seeds a bye preventing those supposedly horrible first round matches.).
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4. Dump the contrived Regions that don't reduce participants travel (& travel expenses). Just because they say it does something doesn't mean it does. Let the participants decide what L2s, L3s & L4s to travel works best for them.

5. (the usta) Don't just talk about kids not missing school......& then yank the WinterNat & the Easter Bowl off the schedule. Keep those events on the schedule since all kids are off during WinterNat & some kids are off during Easter Bowl.

6. Don't have the ONLY two L1s 3 weeks from each other (in mid Summer) & then NADA for the other 11 mos. of the year. Not only is it dumb. It's a huge advantage for the Sept. birthdate kid & a huge disadvantage for the June kid. (The outlier theory on steroids). As mentioned in number 5 above....keep the Easter Bowl (or something like it) in Spring & keep the WinterNat (for lots of reasons) the week after Christmas.

7. Not one kid or one parent wants the draws cut further. Keep them where they are.....& for the L2s, bump them up to 64 (or forty eight) for the 14 y/o, 16 y/o & 18 y/o divisions. (A 48 draw gives the 16 seeds a bye preventing those supposedly horrible first round matches.).
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This past weekend the USTA met with a small group of individuals who claim only to have the best interests of the game at heart. Each of them put aside their own interests and met in order to better the game of tennis for juniors across the entire USA. For that I am thankful. The top guys at the USTA met with a media mogul/club owner, a political analyst, a tennis goods merchant, a news broadcaster and a successful tournament director. What came of the meeting was a 2013 “pause” to the further implementation of proposed changes which were actually not scheduled to go into effect until 2014.

So what will happen next? Is this an end to the enormous body of work presented by Dr. Tim Russell’s USTA Competition Committee this past year? Is it the end of a proposal which won by a “landslide” victory where 15 out of the 16 sections voted overwhelmingly to pass the proposed changes to the national schedule according to Mr. Vegosen? Will we see other reforms within the USTA? How far will this go?

I would love to know what Dr. Tim Russell thinks of the “pause”.

What does this mean to the coaches across the country? Let me give my small readership an example. From my narrow perspective it is not good for the coaches who work with the kids day in and day out. In my case I met with one of the top officials from the USTA in the Southern section of the USA. When we met I explained to him our park had all the required lines and all of the required “rainbow” spectrum of balls needed to coach in the USA and comply with the 10 and Under Mandate.

Our park is located in a great area where players could be helped from very low income homes and families. But I was told if you are not 100% with the mandate you will get no help from us at the USTA. “You must be all the way with us or you are not with us”, was the statement I was given to work with. This has not changed, the phone is not ringing and I have yet to have anyone from the USTA tell us they were going to reverse course and offer us assistance where they can. As long as we differ with the USTA we will not get their help no matter how deserving we might be.

But from all of this coaches/pros should see where they stand in the list of priorities that important and elite people come up with when governing the tennis game in the USA. This is one of the reasons why you will hear me stating the USPTA and PTR are “irrelevant” when it comes to the big picture. When something of this nature happens in the USA and not s single coach is included and the USPTA or PTR does not demand a seat at the table then you can see where coaching is headed in the USA. At the same time look at what is being said about the great coaches we have here in the USA. The head of USTA Player Development thinks the tennis coaches in the USA are a “joke” and France is where it is at when it comes to coaching tennis. It is not right to me that at least one coach such as Jack Sharpe, Mark Bey, Jerry Baskin, Gery Groslimond, or Gary Englebrecht were not asked to sit in and participate in the meeting. The coaches in the trenches just like in 1987 are the last to be asked what they think.